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The joint toll from the authorities of Nepal and China following last Wednesday's massive flood in their border area now exceeds a thousand dead, while a search is still underway for more than 4,000 people who have not yet been located, according to the latest count by Nepalese authorities.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) of Nepal raised the number of bodies recovered in the affected areas to 987 on Tuesday, while lowering the number of missing persons in its territory to 3,916 after removing more than 290 people from the count previously made at hydroelectric power plants.
Adding the data from the border region of Tibet, where the Chinese government maintains the toll at 16 dead and 546 missing, the catastrophe has so far left a global balance of 1,003 dead and 4,462 people unaccounted for on both sides of the mountain.
The progressive reduction in the list of people without contact in Nepal is primarily due to the restoration of electricity supply and telecommunications in the most isolated districts. According to the NDRRMA report, the 110 Nepal Telecom cell towers affected by the flood are now operational.
A large part of the drop in the missing persons report corresponds to the number of workers in hydroelectric projects, which went from 933 to 639, without providing further details on their whereabouts. It is believed that many of them may have been trapped in underground tunnels.
At least 583 foreigners remain unlocated, the agency added, which stated on Sunday that it had been able to contact three Spanish nationals.
More than 21,000 security force personnel, mainly the Army (8,896 soldiers), the Police (7,912), and Armed Police Force agents (4,203), have been deployed to continue with the seventh day of search and rescue operations across the more than 150 kilometers devastated.
To date, aerial rescue tasks led by the Nepalese Army have completed 573 helicopter flights, managing to evacuate a total of 11,814 people since the emergency began.
[Publicidad]